RSS0010.1177/1043463119894581Rationality and SocietyPiano and Carson 894581research-article2019 Article Rationality and Society 2020, Vol. 32(1) 40 –66 Scalp-taking © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1043463119894581https://doi.org/10.1177/1043463119894581 journals.sagepub.com/home/rss Ennio E Piano Middle Tennessee State University, USA Byron B Carson Hampden-Sydney College, USA Abstract At their arrival in North America, travelers from the Old Continent were exposed to a radically different civilization. Among the many practices that captured their imagination was scalp-taking. During a battle, the Native American warrior would often stop after having killed or subdued the enemy and cut off his scalp. In this article, we develop an economic theory of this gruesome practice. We argue that scalp-taking constituted an institutional solution to the problem of monitoring warriors’ behavior in the battlefield under conditions of high information costs. Keywords Military institutions, Native American warfare, scalp-taking Introduction Upon their arrival on the North American continent, European travelers and conquerors entered into contact with an entirely new civilization—really a wide array of civilizations. Estimates of the Native American population at the time of the first contact vary from a little more than 1 million to about 60 million (Driver, 2011: 63), with the general consensus being between 2 and 7 million (Thornton, 2008: 25), divided into hundreds of tribes and Corresponding author: Ennio E Piano, Department of Economics and Finance and Political Economy Research Institute, Jones College of Business, Middle Tennessee State University, University Drive, Murfreesboro, TN 37132, USA. Email: [email protected] Piano and Carson 41 villages. Language, customs, and political and military organization varied from region to region and from tribe to tribe. On the East Coast, the European travelers encountered the League of the Iroquois, the largest and more sophisticated political unit north of Mexico, governed by a council of chiefs from different tribes and representing different interest and professions (Driver, 2011: 21, 302).1 On the West Coast, the modal form of social organ- ization was much smaller and these people “lacked true political organiza- tion” until well into the 19th century (Driver, 2011: 288; Kehoe, 2014). Among the indigenous custom that captured the interest of Europeans were cannibalism and trophy-taking. It was not uncommon for a successful war party to return to the village with prisoners who would then be tortured, killed, and finally “eaten in a cannibalistic feast” (Driver, 2011: 324).2 Human trophy-taking was also extremely common (Chacon and Dye, 2007a). The most popular among these was the practice of scalp-taking. According to the most renowned student of the practice: “The Scalp was the characteristic trophy for the New World” (Friederici, 2008 [1907]: 181). Scalp-taking played a central role in the culture and social life of the group that practiced it. Warriors would risk their lives in order to severe the scalp from a dead or injured enemy. Scalps were publicly exhibited in the houses of warriors, sewn together and worn as hats and jackets, and prominently featured in victory parties after the battle. Scalp-taking has been the focus of much research in archeology (Bueschgen and Case, 1996; Chacon and Dye, 2007b; Mensforth, 2007; Miller, 1994; Neumann, 1940; Ross-Stallings, 2007) and social and cultural anthropology (Axtell and Sturtevant, 1980; Burton, 1864; Driver, 2011; Friederici, 2008 [1907]; Grinnell, 1910; Smith, 1995), but has so far been ignored by econo- mists.3 The purpose of this article is to fill this gap. We provide an economic theory of scalp-taking: This practice, we argue, served as an institutional response to the collective action and principal–agent problems of organized violence. It did so by offering tribes a low-cost monitoring mechanism over the behavior of individual warriors during battle. Hence, we refer to ours as the “effort-inducing” theory of scalp-taking.4 Two claims follow from this insight. First, if scalping was a response to the information costs in measuring warriors’ effort, then it must have served as a superior mechanism to measure effort than most conceivable alternatives, most especially other forms of human trophies. Second, our theory implies that if information costs were absent (or much lower) scalping would not have emerged. Our article contributes to the literature on the economics of small-scale societies. In this, it takes the opposite view to the one that characterizes the perception of the European colonists following their first encounter with the indigenous peoples of North America. Rather than ascribing the institutions characteristic of these societies to moral decay and irrationality, it sees 42 Rationality and Society 32(1) them, including the practice of scalp-taking, as the effective result of the interaction of rational individuals under the particular constraints imposed onto them by the limitations of their technological knowledge. Works in this literature apply the rational choice model to explain the institutions and customs of societies with limited specialization, little tech- nological knowledge, and high information costs (Lueck, 1994; Posner, 1980; Smith, 1975; Suarez, 2018). Demsetz (1967) and Benson (1988) explore the nature and evolution of property rights in such societies. Notwithstanding the absence of a third-party enforcer, these men and women adopted a series of institutions for the delineation and enforcement of property rights. These institutions evolved and adapted efficiently in response to changing economic circumstances: New property rights are cre- ated and enforced as the exchange value of resources increases, as in the case of land ownership among the Indians of the Labrador Peninsula after the rise of the transatlantic fur trade (Demsetz, 1967). Suchman (1989) pro- vides an economic theory of witchcraft in small-scale societies as an infor- mal institution for the protection of intellectual property rights. Similarly, Leeson (2014) uses the rational choice model to explain the prevalence of human sacrifice in premodern India. This practice served as an institution for the reduction of intertribal conflict. Through human sacrifice, which comports the destruction of economic resources, a tribe can decrease anoth- er’s expected benefits from waging war thus effectively decreasing the like- lihood of violent conflict. More recently, Nunn and Sanchez de la Sierra (2017) study the effect of superstitious beliefs on the supply of effort in conflict situations in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We also contribute to the social scientific literature on intergroup conflict (Garfinkel and Skaperdas, 2007; Hirshleifer, 1994; Leeson, 2009; Reyna, 1994). Our argument is closely related to the economic analysis of the insti- tutions for the organization of violence on the battlefield. Brennan and Tullock (1982) first posited that the incentives of individual soldiers and those of their generals are not necessarily aligned. Armies suffer from prin- cipal–agent and prisoners’ dilemma problems. Frey and Buhofer (1988) examine the effect of alternative property rights structures over prisoners and other spoils of war on armies’ performance. Allen (1998, 2002) studies the institutional arrangements adopted by the British Empire to align the incentives of the parties involved in military operations on land and sea. Leeson (2007, 2014) explores the constitutional rules regulating compensa- tion in “pirating expeditions.” Our article takes a similar approach by focusing on the institutional arrangements of organized conflict among Native Americans. More specifi- cally, we focus on the popular practice of the taking of the scalp of the defeated enemy—during or soon after the end of a battle—as it developed in the North Piano and Carson 43 American continent before the arrival of the Europeans.5 We argue that this practice served a crucial role in solving the principal–agent problem that char- acterizes organized combat at under low levels of technological knowledge and high information costs. The historical, ethnographic, and archeological evidence strongly corroborates this interpretation. As we discuss in the body of the article, standard historical and anthropological studies of this institution as it was practiced before European colonization have been silent about the possible function, while emphasizing cultural and spiritual factors instead.6 This is not the case with respect to the practice as it evolved after the creation of European colonies in the continent, as this was adopted and encouraged by the colonial governments with the explicit intent of encouraging the killing of European and Native enemies (Friederici, 2008 [1907]: 73–87).7 Our approach illuminates several important features of the practice of scalp-taking. For example, it explains why the scalp, and not some other body part, became the most widespread object of trophy-taking among Native American societies. It also provides insights into why the practice was more prevalent among some Native American peoples and not so prev- alent or entirely absent among others. Finally, it accounts for a variety of other cultural features of these societies that were connected to this institu- tion, including the “scalp-dance,” mating-market practices, and the custom- ary hairstyle of Native American